Back to Starters on Wheelset 2

It didn’t take long to unwind the abortive start I’d made using the short DT Competition spokes and now I had in prospect a quiet evening, once the kids were in bed, because Mrs P was going out on the razzle with her girly friends. This is the plan, similar to before:

1. Lace the wheel.
2. Take up most of the slack.
3. Align the spokes.
4. Take up the remaining slack.
5. Make the wheel laterally true.
6. Make the wheel radially true.
7. Equalise the spoke tension.
8. Improve the dish.
9. Final tensioning and finishing touches.
10. Pour a large glass of vintage port!

I’m going to start with the rear wheel again, as this is how the Wheelpro guide starts, but following the abortive start I’ve decided that instead of working this wheel all the way to completion before beginning the front I’ll do steps 1 & 2 on the rear, then repeat these on the front, then do step 3 for both wheels before running through steps 4-9 consecutively. The reason for this is that I’m 100% comfortable with the process of tensioning and truing a pre-built wheel, but feel it would help if I do the initial stages all together as I’m less familiar with these and it saves re-reading the same sections of the Wheelpro guide over and over.

It took just over an hour to lace up both wheels and align the spokes. My spokes are STILL not quite long enough! However they’re much easier to work with than before and by simply backing off each nipple by a couple of turns I get the whole lot laced up without much fuss. The wheels are acceptably true and round which should make the remaining steps fairly straightforward. A good time to break for the day!